Skill Challenge Bonus/Penalties

[evirus]

For Skill Challenges in 4e it is often pointed out that when the players fail the challenge they do not necessarily fail to complete the task at hand, but they fail to do it well or with repercussions.

Also, succeeding said challenge is also supposed to allow bonuses.

What common bonuses or penalties have you seen or would you apply to the party?

[Kurald Galain]

Originally Posted by evirus

What common bonuses or penalties have you seen or would you apply to the party?

Generally, the adventure continues as normal but you (1) lose a healing surge, (2) get a surprise round against you, or (3) get an extra enemy in the next combat. This is all from WOTC printed adventures, and none of this makes the SC particularly relevant.

[TheEmerged]

I'd reword what you said slightly. In my experience, skill challenges do better in "branching" scenarios than pass/fail scenarios. Personally, I use them more to determine the extent of success/failure than anything else.

That is, if the question is whether or not the drow matriarch kills you or lets you live, I don't do it as a skill challenge. I would make a skill challenge to determine whether or not you have to fight your way through the Level+3 elite drow matriarch and her (number of people in party)+3 Level+2 assistants or can talk your way out of the situation, though.

Other than the ones Kurald listed, here are some that have come up in my own campaign.

1> If the party succeeds, the enemy ("boss" monster) has vulnerability:5 until save ends. If the party fails, the enemy has resistance:5 until save ends. This save begins a -5 but gets a +1 bonus per turn.

2> For every net success the party has (success>failure), there is an additional round until the enemy ("boss" monster) can take a standard action. For every net failure the party has (failure>success), the enemy starts with an extra action point (and was already defined as having 3 it could use in the same encounter).

3> For every net success the party gets, one additional Myconid Sniper Ninja begins the encounter without concealment. If the party fails the challenge, the MSN's get a save not to lose concealment when making their ranged attack.

4> If the party fails the challenge, the Myconid Puppetmancers begin with 2 Full Minions active instead of 1 Full Minion and 2 Flanker Minions. If the party has 4 or more net successes, the MP begin with only 4 Flanker Minions.

5> For every success, remove a round of reinforcements to the boss. For every failure, add a round of reinforcements (this was for a 6-before-3 challenge, starting with 4 rounds of reinforcements).

[evirus]

Originally Posted by TheEmerged

I'd reword what you said slightly. In my experience, skill challenges do better in "branching" scenarios than pass/fail scenarios. Personally, I use them more to determine the extent of success/failure than anything else.

That is, if the question is whether or not the drow matriarch kills you or lets you live, I don't do it as a skill challenge. I would make a skill challenge to determine whether or not you have to fight your way through the Level+3 elite drow matriarch and her (number of people in party)+3 Level+2 assistants or can talk your way out of the situation, though.

/agree fully

I don't think SC are supposed to be used as pass fail options. I have always seen them as montage scenes or chase scenes in movies (in fact a chase scene is described in the DMG if memory serves).

The best example I gave players was the scene in the movie 13th Warrior when they are sneaking in to the caves. They did well so they got to the last encounter but no so well the dm didn't penalize them by having them remove all their armor.

Onece, as a penalty for having failed a SC challenge, I asked every character (6th lvl) to pick an encounter power that was considered "used" for that combat.